Unified Id - the identity of your data.

Why

What is Unified Id? If GUID is too heavy for your application but you need a random global Id that can be used as a string or long basic type, you are in right place.

What are the main advantages?

Feature	Unified	GUID
Size	8 byte (13 as string)	16 byte (36 as string)
Partitioning	Build-in	No, external can be added
Collisions	0.00000001% in 10B IDs	50% in 2.7e18 IDs
Cast	implicit(string, ulong, long)	explicit(byte[], Parse/ToString)
Generate	Build-in(byte[], string, GUID)	No, only random NewGuid
Null/Empty-handling	Friendly as Empty	Exception

Getting started

Install the NuGet package and write the following code:

using Unified;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        var id = UnifiedId.NewId(); // AFHUTVDSGUGVQ
    }
}

You have created your first Unified Id!

Want to use it as a string? string id = UnifiedId.NewId(); or long? long id = UnifiedId.NewId();

UnifiedId could be used as DDD ValueObject in your entities.

using Unified;

class User
{
    public UnifiedId UserId { set; get; }
}

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        var user = new User
        {
            UserId = UnifiedId.NewId();
        };

        var settings = new JsonSerializerSettings // Could be added to global settings.
        { 
            Converters = new List<JsonConverter> 
            { 
                new UnifiedIdConverter() 
            }
        };
        var json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(user, settings); // { "UserId": "AFHUTVDSGUGVQ" }
    }
}

How it works

using Unified;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        var guid = Guid.NewGuid();
        var id = UnifiedId.FromGuid(guid);
        var fnv = id.ToUInt64();
        Console.WriteLine($"{guid} => {fnv} => {id}");
        // 8dd02ad1-62cc-4015-9502-49658ba240ae => 15834445116674749764 => DNFPVU1LD2DA4
    }
}

Unified Id generates 64bit FNV-1a Id's based on GUID and converts it to HEX32 to use as string.

HEX32 is reversible, so you can convert it back from string to UInt64. ulong number = UnifiedId.Parse("DNFPVU1LD2DA4");

Why FNV-1a 64bit? because it has the best space randomization in the case of GUID conversion, below is space representation.

Default method of generation is GUID based using method var id = UnifiedId.NewId();.

This value could be used as string converted in HEX32 consisting of two parts.

[KEY][UNIFIED_ID] KEY - Partition/Shard Key and UNIFIED_ID as Row Unified Key together used as the global identity.

You can also generate this Id as a one-way hash using the following sources:

• UnifiedId FromGuid(Guid id)
• UnifiedId FromBytes(byte[] bytes)
• UnifiedId FromString(string text)
• UnifiedId FromInt64(long number)
• UnifiedId FromUInt64(ulong number)

Do you need sequential Id? var id = new UnifiedId(DateTime.UtcNow.Ticks)

Want to save partitioned data? It's easy...

using Unified;
using System;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        // Let's emulate the partitioned database.
        var db = new Dictionary<string, List<UnifiedId>>();

        // We will use 10M records, just to execute it fast.
        var all = 10000000; 
        for (var i = 0; i <= all; i++)
        {
            // Generate random Id.
            var id = UnifiedId.NewId();

            // Get it's partition key. Number of partitions could be customized, default 16K.
            var partition = id.PartitionKey();

            // Initialize partitions in your DB.
            if (!db.ContainsKey(partition))
            {
                db.Add(partition, new List<UnifiedId>());
            }

            // Add values to partitions.
            db[partition].Add(id);
        }
    }
}

Result:

DB Count             : 16384
Each item contain    : 610 elements +/-5%

We recommend using Unified Id for data sets size up to 10 billion Ids. More will increase the chance of collision.

© 2021 Serhii Seletskyi. All rights reserved.